2.4 The tools menu

Bulk Change

Zegeba Designer has some very useful tools for changing the properties and names of many elements in one operation. This is very handy when you’ve done a Copy operation and the copied elements have the same Name or Element ID as the original ones, or when you need to change all IDs to incorporate new parameters.

Change Property of Elements

1. Remember to first select the area or element that you wish to change.
2. Select Tools – Change Property of Elements.

Under Filter conditions you must specify which properties and elements to change:

5. In the dropdown box Property to change, select the property you wish to change in the selected area. This property can be name, border, hidden/not hidden, font, etc.
6. In the dropdown box Limit to Element Type, Any type is automatically chosen. This means that the changes will be implemented for all relevant element types. If you wish to restrict the changes to one element type only, select the type of element in this box.
7. You can use the boxes Starts With, Contains, Ends With to further specify the elements you want to change. Type in the parts of element names in the relevant box. E.g. to change only elements with “January” in their names, type January in the Contains box.

Under Rename actions, enter the change you wish to implement:

19. If you want to add a prefix to the name of the specified elements, type text in Prefix with to have this text inserted at the beginning of the names.
20. If you want to add a postfix to the name of the specified elements, type text in Postfix with to have this text inserted at the end of the names.
21. If you want to set a new value to the selected property of the specified elements, type text or numbers in Set value to.

Change Element IDs

1. Remember to first select the area or element that you wish to change.
2. Select Tools – Change Element IDs.

Under Preparatory actions you can first choose to reset the IDs to default.

5. Check the box Reset Element IDs to default to have a number added to the end of all element IDs, e.g. from Month to Month_23.

Under Filter conditions you must specify which properties and elements to change:

8. In the dropdown box Limit to Element Type, Any type is automatically chosen. This means that the changes will be implemented for all relevant element types. If you wish to restrict the changes to one element type only, select the type of element in this box.
9. Check Limit to Elements with invalid/duplicate Element ID to have the changes only apply to the elements for which you get an error message. This often happens when copying and pasting a group of elements.

17. If you want to further specify the elements you want to change, you can use the boxes Element ID starts With / Contains. Type in the parts of element names in the relevant box. E.g. to change only elements with “January” in their names, type January in the Contains box.

Under Rename actions, enter the change you wish to implement:

23. If you want to add a prefix to the name of the specified elements, type text in Prefix all Elements with to have this text inserted at the beginning of the names.
24. If you want to add a postfix to the name of the specified elements, type text in Postfix all Elements with to have this text inserted at the end of the names.

You can further specify the change in the last box, for instance to prefix all IDs with the name of their “parents’” IDs. See some examples here:

29. In the dropdown box Make unique function, the default option is Auto incremented number (Post fixed). This means that the new IDs will get a number added as a postscript, e.g. name will become name_1, and that this number will be incremented automatically. E.g. name_1, name_2, name_3…
    – Select Postfix with 1st group/parent Element ID to get the name of the parent element added at the end of the ID. E.g.: if a grid called January contains the element called Week_1, the new ID of Week_1 will be Week_1_January.
    – Select Prefix with 2nd group/parent Element ID to get the name of the parent element added at the end of the ID. E.g.: if a page called 2018 contains a grid named January which contains the element Week_1, the new ID of Week_1 will be 2018_Week_1.
    – Select No other action if you just want the renaming to include the specifications in the Prefix and Postfix boxes above.

Settings – Designer

Use the Designer option in Tools – Settings to customize what you see in the Elements and Toolbox areas of the Designer. You may select one or more options at a time.

For the Elements area

Show Element ID in list of Elements shows the ID, e.g. name_1_20.
Show Element Label in list of Elements is default. This option is generally easier to read. E.g. Company name.

For the Toolbox area

Show new Element type name next to icon is default. It adds the names of the element types next to the type icons.
Show new Element description under Element type name and icon: when the option above this is selected, you can also choose this one to get a description for each element type. E.g. Single Select gets the added description “(Dropdown or radio buttons)”.

For the Properties area

Select value of last edited property after selecting another Element is used to automatically select the value of the last focused/edited element property when clicking on another element in the form. This is useful if you quickly need to replace the whole Name/Label of each element you click on. Not selecting this setting will put the cursor at the end of the last edited/focused element property.